Calcutta: running on empty

The megalopolis of eastern India was built for 300,000 people, and the infrastructure was enough for a smallish European provincial city. Now 13.2 million cram into its greater urban zone and more arrive every day

Calcutta airport is run-down compared with airports in “India Shining” growth areas such as New Delhi, Bangalore or Hyderabad. A banner on the concourse proclaims “Welcome to the City of Joy”, a reference to the book by Dominique Lapierre. When I called him to ask about it, he said the title was meant to express the “courage, resilience and dynamism” of the slum-dwellers whose daily lives he described: “As Tagore once said, adversity is great, but man is greater still.” A third of Calcutta’s 4.5 million inhabitants (13.2 million for the entire urban area) lives in the slums. In Mumbai, the country’s economic pulse, the ratio is 55%.

The only megalopolis in eastern India, Calcutta has been a magnet for surrounding rural populations since the British founded it at the end of the 17th century. It attracted economic migrants and refugees fleeing famine (1943) or war (1947 and 1971). Now, said Lapierre: “Millions of people have been catapulted by wars and climatic disasters to a city built for 300,000, and its capacity is exhausted. Some areas only have one latrine and one water fountain for 5,000 to 6,000 people.”

Economic growth has not contained the flow, and the NGO Samaritans estimates that a thousand new migrants settle in the urban agglomeration every day. People in the countryside try to escape economic stagnation in the villages and the pressures of the caste system and religion. Sometimes they flee violence, family feuds, local powers, or Naxalite guerrillas. A minority come from neighbouring Bangladesh. For 3,000 rupees ($68), it is easy to cross the border illegally. The language is the same, and a bribe to the police will prevent expulsion. In Calcutta people are able to start a new life with a new identity, away from social conformity. “Here the only thing that matters is status,” said Patrick Ghose, an academic. “If you’re from a lowly caste, you can change your name legally for 700 rupees [about $16]. So anyone can settle here and feel at home.”

(1) “India Shining” was a slogan used by India’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2004 elections.

(2) Dominique Lapierre, The City of Joy, Doubleday Books, New York, 1985, and made into a film in 1992 by Roland Joffé. Lapierre used the royalties to found a network of clinics, schools and hospital boats; www.cityofjoyaid.org

(3) Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali writer, playwright, painter and philosopher who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

(5) A Maoist guerrilla movement that has returned to favour in the poverty-ridden rural areas. See Cédric Gouverneur, “Populism – a quaint local custom”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, December 2007.

(7) Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhia, or Mother Teresa (1910-97), a nun of Albanian origin, devoted her life to the poor of India from 1948; she won the Nobel Prize for peace in 1979, and was beatified in 2003. She was criticised for her opposition to abortion and the lack of medical care in her Calcutta hospices.